Using a grain mill is so easy!!

My bloggy friend Kerry at Ramblings of a Wannabe Housewife had another great question that I really wanted to answer. Her comment was this,

Well, its a great blog! Godd for you for opening it up to your "real life". I am learning so muchh, especially about emergency prep and bread baking. I am even considering a grain mill. Is that a crazy thought for someone who works outside of the home?!?!

It is crazy not to get one! So yes, absolutely get a grain mill!!! I love it, my family loves what I make with it, and we are healthier.

The first thing you need to know is that I hated to cook. In fact the deal we made before we got married was that hubby would cook, I would clean. This was a wonderful arrangement until we decided to live in the country and hubby would commute to the city. He no longer gets home in time to do the cooking, so now I have to do all the cooking. The funny thing is that once I started to do it I found some really easy recipes that are really good.

As for baking homemade bread, I started to research all the benefits of milling your own grain and baking with freshly milled flour. It is amazing all the nutritional value that is lost in the processing of flour, even store bought whole wheat flour! Here is just one example that you should read from Nutrition Lifestyles. After reading this I am on a quest to never use store bought flour ever again!

I started with making bread. But first I needed to make an investment. Yes, this was alot of money to pay at once, but considering that I will never again buy a loaf of bread, store bought flour, cake mixes, eggos, etc etc, it will eventually save us financially. If I just consider no longer buying bread, all of this will be paid for in about a year. Of course the biggest benefit is nutritional, and that is well worth it. So here is what I needed to buy:

• a good mixer, I bought a Cuisinart because the reviews for the Kitchenaids in my price range said they were not great for mixing bread dough.
• a grain mill, I bought a Wondermill. Again based on reviews it seemed like this was a better choice over the Nutrimill.
• some grain. We bought 45 lb of grain in 5 gallon pails, we now have several of these pails. It was never a question if we would store grain for long term food storage, the deal for me is how would I use it regularly

Now that I had all the things I needed, I was ready to bake. If you can follow a recipe you can bake bread. And it really does not take any longer to use a grain mill. Here is what I do:

• Click here for the recipe I have been using regularly, first I measure out how many cups of grain I need to grind, about 4 1/2 cups. This will give me some leftover that I freeze and will use later to coat stew meat or roasts in.
• I turn on the grain mill and dump it in.
• While it is running I heat 2 cups of water in the microwave for 1 minute.
• Then I measure 1/2 cup of oil and 1/2 (or less) of honey. Here's a tip I learned from My girlfriend -pour the oil in first, then the honey and it all comes out nicely. Otherwise the honey just sticks everywhere!
• By the time I have dumped the water, oil, and honey into the mixer the mill has finished. So then I just have to measure out the flour. I do pack it down because it is very fluffy compared to store bought flour that has had months to settle!

And that is it, all the rest of the steps are no different than baking bread with regular flour. The link to th recipe and the rest of the ingredients is above. The way I see it there is only 2 extra steps. 1. measure the grain, and 2. pack the flour!

I challenge you to bake your own bread, and if you do, then there is no reason why you can not also grind your own wheat! If I can do it, (remember that I am very cooking challenged) anyone can do it.

Let me know what your plans are to bake your bread or what your experiences have been. I would love to hear from others who are doing this.